We live in a world where important people are plugged in, wired, connected. Information blizzards us. Cyber-social networks keep us continuously updated on hundreds or thousands of people in real-time stream of consciousness. The Twitterers tweet. We don’t have to go looking for the “news.” Ping—it comes looking for us, clogging the inbox. We used […]
Prayer/Meditation
The Lantern Never Lies
On the odyssey of life we need some way of knowing where we are, and whether we’re headed the right direction. In English, to be “oriented” is to know where east is. Historically, church buildings are situated so that the altar is on the east wall, and almost always a window opens to receive the […]
The Arrival
In “the Arrival,” a 1996 Sci-Fi, Charlie Sheen stars as a radio astronomer who scans the heavens for signs of extra-terrestrial intelligence. His radio telescope is trained on the stars, hoping to pick up a narrow band of radiation that would belie the communication of an advanced civilization beyond our solar system. A poster on […]
Losing My Mind
I am at Pendle Hill, a Quaker retreat center outside Philadelphia. Like all retreat centers it is a refuge of quiet, a place of reflection, a deliberate exit from the fast lane of contemporary life. The buildings are Pennsylvania fieldstone, circa 1930, small, spare, rather cold (Quakers waste nothing, especially fuel oil), but with roaring […]
Ninety in Ninety
Ninety in ninety. That’s what my friend—I’ll call him Gary—had just accomplished a week earlier. Ninety AA meetings in ninety days. We sat in a coffee shop last night and I heard his story. There are a thousand ways to be a drunk, but one outcome. You can’t stop drinking even though it’s killing you […]
A Teaspoon of Sand
Ted Ryan, a friend of mine, told me about an experience that goes under the category of “the things a child can imagine.” He was giving his four year-old son breakfast before he went off to work, but the boy was just sitting there. He wasn’t touching his cereal. So Ted says to his son, […]